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Experienced craft brewers worry newcomers compromise on quality

Head brewmaster James Howat uses a variety of tests to work on the cultivation of his wild yeast at his Former Future Brewing in Denver. Howat says he works diligently monitoring his yeasts. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post)

If that glass of craft beer you ordered at the neighborhood pub tastes like buttered popcorn, that is not a good thing.

Not for the consumer — because the beer probably wasn't cheap — and not for leaders of the rapidly growing American craft brewing industry who know that flavor is usually a telltale sign of bacterial infection or other problems.

As more than 7,000 brewery representatives gather in Denver this week for the Craft Brewers Conference, the more established brewers in their ranks are becoming increasingly vocal about beer quality.

Their concern is that some new, inexperienced brewers are creating inferior products and not investing sufficient resources in testing, cleaning and troubleshooting, possibly damaging the industry.

Zach Alexander, right, enjoys a beer with his father, Ken, in the tasting room of Former Future Brewing, which opened this year in Denver. Nearly 1,900 new breweries are in various stages of planning, according to the Brewers Association. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post)

Paul Gatza, president of the Brewers Association, a Boulder-based trade group that stages the annual conference, said beer quality is at all an all-time high, especially at the top end of brewers.

However, he said, "with so many brewery openings, the potential is there for things to start to degrade on the quality side, and we wouldn't want that to color the willingness of the beer drinker to try new brands. If a beer drinker has a bad experience, they are just going to go back to companies they know and trust."

Numbers help explain the concern. The estimated 2,768 independent craft breweries operating in the U.S. in 2013 will soon have a lot of company. Nearly 1,900 new breweries are in various stages of planning, according to the Brewers Association.

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Craft brewing also experienced a growth spurt in the 1990s, when many new players entered the field not out of passion for hops and malt but in hopes of getting rich. This latest wave is different, sustained by homebrewers with no previous professional brewing background.

Mitch Steele of Stone Brewing Co. of Escondido, Calif., the nation's 10th-largest craft brewery, was blunt in speaking at the conference that began Tuesday and ends Friday. "If you are starting a brewery," he said, "please, for God's sake, hire someone who knows what they're doing."

Pioneering Oregon brewer John Harris said that at a time when beer education classes are tough to get into, many homebrewers who have little to go on but rave reviews from friends just open their doors and say, "Here we are." He said new breweries should spend as much money on their quality-control program as the brewing equipment.

"If you are having problems with beer, ask others for help," said Harris, who opened Ecliptic Brewing in Portland last fall. "Don't be too proud. We can help each other make our beer better."

Gatza said quality problems include off flavors, oxidation and the presence of dimethyl sulfide, a sulfur compound produced during fermentation that gives a whiff of corn.

That buttered popcorn or butterscotch flavor can come from diacetyl, a compound that can creep into the brewing process if temperatures are wrong or equipment isn't properly cleaned.

Brewers Association chief operating officer Bob Pease emphasized that the group does offer materials for members on quality issues, including a free best-practices guide.

Former Future Brewing opened in Denver earlier this year. The headbrewer, James Howat, is a microbiologist whose previous brewing experience involved homebrewing for seven years.

His wife and the brewery co-owner, Sarah Howat, said Former Future has every employee taste beer on a daily basis and is testing in-house on a very small lab system. "People have a perception that because you are new you are not going to be good, which is disheartening," she said. "For James never having brewed on a large-scale system, I think we are knocking out some pretty good beer."

Elevation Beer Co. in Poncha Springs opened in 2012 with a headbrewer with two years' experience at a production brewery.

Co-founder Xandy Bustamante said Elevation ships beer to an independent lab for testing and is getting ready to install its own lab to test for yeast cell counts, cleanliness, diacetyl and more, basic stuff he admits "the guys at Coors would probably laugh about."

"You have to put your money where your mouth is with quality," Bustamante said. "We have dumped batches, which is hard to do with a new brewery when you are trying to pay your bills."

Gatza said the Brewers Association board wants to keep barriers to entry into the brewing world low.

"This isn't just a club where you got in early enough and you can reap the rewards and keep everyone else out," he said. "Some of the new brewers are going to have a lot to add."

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